The decision to change the official name of the Paralympic Games's most exciting and eye-catching sport from the arresting Murderball to the more accurate if prosaic Wheelchair Rugby in the late 1980s has not diminished its appeal. Tickets for the London 2012 tournament sold out in three days and Team GB's preparations for August are progressing according to plan. On Sunday, members of the elite squad are playing for their club sides in the Super Series at the Medway Sports Park in Gillingham before resuming their training programmes for the test event at the Olympic Park's Basketball Arena on 18 April.

The young sport, which was originated in Canada in 1977, is a brutal and dynamic hybrid of basketball, handball and ice hockey. Each team have 12 members with four of them on the court during play and the other eight interchanging throughout the game. Players are given a points classification from 0.5 to 3.5 according to their functional level and the points total for the four players on court cannot exceed eight.

The object, over four eight-minute quarters, is to cross the opponent's goalline with the ball in hand and two wheels on the floor to score a point. The action is fast, end-to-end and littered with high-impact collisions, which appeal as much to the participants as the spectators.

"They love it," says Patty Cornelius, the GB team manager. "They're adrenaline junkies. When some of them were in hospital after their spinal cord injuries they were taken care of very well and coddled. Wheelchair rugby gave them the chance to get out and say: 'No, I'm not going to break.' They love the physicality."

Cornelius joined Team GB last year from her position as national programme manager and team leader of the USA team she took to the gold medal in Beijing when Britain finished fourth. "It's been exciting to come here and help Britain develop a process like the US's pipeline of talent moving up from clubs through a development pool to the elite game. We are targeting success at the test event. It's go time. We're excited but focused on finishing everything we've been working on for four years."

TAEKWONDO

One of the more curious Olympic countdown episodes emerged from New Zealand this week when Logan Campbell was awarded a place on their London 2012 team. In 2009 Campbell grabbed the headlines when he announced he was opening what he described as "a high-class escort agency" in Auckland to fund his bid for inclusion in the London squad. Prostitution is legal in New Zealand but the move did not go down well with the Olympic Committee and he sold it a year later. The publicity, though, led to sponsorship and success.